Legislative Brinkmanship Saves Local Land Settlement
After rumors of crippling budget cuts, a last-minute push from local representatives and the American Legion secures funding for the White Bluffs land settlement.
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A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A telegram from J. C. Lloyd in Olympia dated Friday at noon confirmed that the House had appropriated $50,000 for the land settlement project. It is presumed the Senate is also agreeable to the appropriation. This $50,000, combined with the remaining funds from two years ago, will carry the project through the year, according to Project Manager J. C. Scott. Earlier this week, a message from Benton County representative M. M. Moulton suggested the legislature was in a mood to gut the appropriation, prompting J. C. Lloyd, Fred M. Weil, K. P. Reynolds of Hanford, and Kelly DePriest of the American Legion to travel to Olympia to lobby for the project.
“The legislature, under the urge of the economy plan being carried out in Olympia this session was in a mood to cut the land settlement appropriation to almost nothing.”
Public funding for agricultural development and irrigation was the lifeblood of these early desert towns. Today, the remnants of these same irrigation projects and the vanished town of White Bluffs itself are managed under the shadow of the Hanford Site, highlighting the drastic shift from agrarian development to industrial remediation.
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